Cream rises to top after Geelong's bloodless win over insipid Collingwood
A week can be an eternity in footy. After prevailing against West Coast in the pick of the finest first round of finals you will see, Collingwood looked to be in the formative stages of a good, old-fashioned roll. Next in the crosshairs was Geelong and a semi-final match-up that had a sense of foreboding about it for the Cats. Fear that one of the all-time greats, Gary Ablett, might be playing his last game; fear that Geelong coach Chris Scott might again be interrogated about his side’s habitual failure to win finals for the best part of a decade.
In the event, Cats fans had nothing to fear. Whatever it took out of Collingwood to barge past the Eagles by a solitary point, it stayed in Perth. Instead of momentum, they brought to the Gabba a spent carcass. The Pies were as flat as a pancake. One goal to half-time – a 60-year club low in finals football – and just seven points to three-quartertime. Four junk-time goals in the final term spared Collingwood a raft of other plumbed depths, but there was no getting away from the fact this was about as insipid as it gets in the post-season. Sixty-eight points at the death might as well have been 680. “We just looked like we couldn’t go,” Nathan Buckley said. “It was as comprehensive a loss as you’re going to see.”
As easy as it is to get carried away with how awful Collingwood were, Geelong were lethal. Their plan to control the ball worked a treat. When their high-possession, kick-mark game is on, it is a joy to behold. The Magpies simply could not get their hands on it. The statistics from the game are as unique as they are telling. Clearances: 34-21; uncontested possessions: 251-109; marks: 134-46. Geelong won the contest and then did as they very well pleased.
Patrick Dangerfield played like a man who will get to an AFL grand final if it’s going to kill him. Four goals and a hand in several others to go with six marks and 19 touches, pretty much all from full-forward. It will be fascinating to see what Scott does with Dangerfield against Brisbane. As damaging and influential as the former Crow can be in the midfield, he simply must spend good amounts of time forward in the prelim. The Lions will happily prepare for Tom Hawkins as the focal point in Geelong’s attack but Dangerfield adds another dimension as well as easing the pressure on the Coleman medalist, who on Saturday kicked his 600th career goal among four majors for the night.
Quite how this easy kill will prepare the Cats for their Brisbane is open to discussion, but it did spare Scott more unwelcome needling. During the week, the Geelong coach called criticism of Geelong’s finals record since their premiership year of 2011 as “lazy”. Their win over Collingwood takes the ledger in that time to five wins and 12 defeats. Victory over the Lions, and then again a week later, will silence the doubters and render that imbalance null and void. Scott knows he is running out of time to set the record straight, but if he is listening to external noise he is not letting on. “You’d be surprised how little some people, including me, actually hear about that stuff,” he said on Saturday night. “I think it’s a bad mindset to be in to get extra motivation from what people who don’t live in your world are saying … I can’t think of a nice way to say that I don’t really care.”
Geelong’s bloodless triumph means each of the top four sides are through to the preliminary finals, following on from Richmond’s 31-point win over St Kilda. The Tigers might not have blown away their opposition in the same manner as the Cats, but they were impressive enough in advancing to Friday night’s knockout against Port Adelaide. The Saints would no doubt have made a better fist of it had they kicked straight, but Richmond always looked the winner after their openingquarter salvo.
Instead of Richmond’s midfield excellence, however, instead of Shai Bolton’s ascent to the elite, the main talking point is the Tigers’ increasingly hostile brand of footy. Not for the first time this year, Tom Lynch attracted the attention of the match review officer when he subjected Dougal Howard to treatment that included a bum on the head and a knee to the neck. Trent Cotchin, who memorably escaped punishment for a head-high bump that concussed Dylan Shiel in the 2017 preliminary final, again walked the tightrope against St Kilda when he rag-dolled Zak Jones with a head-high sling. Lynch can accept a $750 fine with an early guilty plea while Cotchin was deemed as having no case to answer.
Regardless, Richmond are flirting on the fringe of what is acceptable. “Great teams always play on the edge and the fact of the matter is it’s a big boys’ game,” coach Damien Hardwick said. “Things happen and players will always play hard and tough and there’s a reason we’re in our fourth prelim in a row. Our guys understand the rules. They’ll push the envelope, there’s no doubt about that.”
And let’s face it, finals is the time to do it. As everyone knows, you’re a much better chance of getting off.